My husband, myself, and my daughter who just turned 13 were on the Nov. 1 sailing of the Disney Wonder. A little background on us, this was our 6th cruise, all others were with Carnival. We visit WDW every year and incorporated a 3 night stay at WDW with this cruise as well. We had rented a car for the trip, as it was only $20 more than the transfers were to have a car at our disposal for a full week.

We booked the cruise through a travel agent that I use. We arrived at the port at about 11AM. It was a very easy experience, as we unloaded the car at the sidewalk, a porter came right up to us, and my husband went and parked the car in the parking area while the porter took our luggage. We went right inside and I was impressed with how smooth the process was. Every other cruise I've been on, lines are horrendous as you wait to go through the metal detector, then to someone to process your information. Disney does have a very good system for embarkation that the other cruise lines should take note of. We got our room keys and our picture taken and were in group 11 to board. The groups boarded fairly quickly, and we were on board by 12:15.

Based on advice from other reviews, we didn't try to fight our way up to the buffet area on the pool deck but rather went to Parrot Cay for lunch as soon as we boarded. The buffet there was excellent, a lot of variety. We then went to make our reservations for Palo once we finished lunch. It was still early, so we wandered around the ship for a bit and then went to our cabin. The cabin was of comparable size to balcony rooms we've had before, maybe a bit larger. The balcony itself is bigger than ones we've had on other ships. The set up of the split bath is definitely a plus. Read more